Materials and methods
Study area
We studied jaguars in the locality of Laguna Om (18°37’59” N,
89º05’39” W), Othón P. Blanco municipality in the south of Quintana Roo
state (Fig. 1). This area is a unit of the National Protected Areas
System, and located within the biological corridor between Calakmul and
Sian ka’an Biosphere Reserves in the south of Yucatan Peninsula. The
area is a heterogeneous mosaic dominated by cattle ranching and
agricultural lands (Briceño-Méndez et al ., 2017) and three main
tropical plant communities: tropical subperennial, deciduous, and
seasonally flooded forests (Martínez and Galindo-Leal, 2002). The
average annual temperature and rainfall are 24.6 ºC and 1,000 - 1,300
mm, respectively (INEGI, 2017). Rainwater readily percolates through the
karst formations which underlay a large portion of the area (Martínez
and Galindo-Leal, 2002), leaving few permanent water bodies, locally
known as “aguadas” (Reyna-Hurtado et al ., 2010).